


No Balance Sheet in Love

by Woaf



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Epistolary, F/M, Just my attempt to sort it all out in my head, M/M, Post-Season/Series 04, almost - probably happens just before the final montage
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-24
Updated: 2017-03-24
Packaged: 2018-10-10 05:02:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10429719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Woaf/pseuds/Woaf
Summary: After Sherrinford and Musgrave and all that disaster, John and Sherlock try to move on.





	1. Chapter 1

Sherlock,

It feels odd to be writing you a letter, but I need to tell you something. Some things, actually. I don’t know if I’d be able to say the words out loud if we were face to face, so….

After all that has happened, I’ve realized that secrets are not good. When they eventually come out, there’s damage to those who hear them. If they never come out, there’s damage to those who keep them.

When the strain of everything got too much, you told me it was okay. When I told you it wasn’t, you said, “It is what it is.” But, Sherlock, you don’t know what it is.

Okay, deep breath……..

Sherlock, I love you.

From the very first moment. “Love at first sight” is such a cliché, but it’s true. Before you asked “Iraq or Afghanistan?” Before I knew how utterly brilliant you are. Even when I saw what an annoying dick you could be. After you left me. After you came back. I hated you then for what you’d put me through, but it didn’t stop me loving you.

I don’t expect you do to anything about this. I’m not asking you if you can – or want to – reciprocate my feelings. You’ve made your aversion to emotional entanglement clear. You don’t even have to refer to this letter or its contents ever again if you don’t want to. After seeing the effect that finding out about Euros had on you, I just don’t want you to have another, “Why didn’t I know about…?” waiting to come to the surface and hurt you.

I don’t want to see you hurt any more.

So now you know.

I love you.

Yours, John


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Text thread after Sherlock reads John's letter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Texts in italics are deleted before they're actually sent.

SH 18:37

John

 

JW 18:37

Yes

 

SH 18:38

I’ve read your letter

 

JW 18:40

And?

 

SH 18:40

_I don’t know what to_

 

SH 18:40

_I don’t know how to tell you_

SH 18:40

Thank you.

 

SH 18:41

I want

 

SH 18:41

You’re right about

 

JW 18:45

Sherlock, are you okay?

 

SH 18:45

Yes, John.

 

SH 18:47

May I reply in kind?

 

JW 18:48

?

 

SH 18:49

May I write back to you?  I want to choose my words carefully.

 

JW 18:50

Of course.  Whenever you’re ready.  I’ll wait.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The following morning, John finds an envelope with J.W. handwritten in ink on his doormat. Sherlock has hand delivered his letter during the night.

Dear John,

It feels odd, but good, to be writing you a letter.  Odd, because it’s not how we communicate.  Good, because, thanks to your letter, I think we can really start to communicate.

You know me.  You know how I work, how I function.  The Science of Deduction.  The Mind Palace.  The world’s only consulting detective behind his barrier of reason and logic that kept all emotion away.

Euros destroyed that barrier and I’m lost.  I’m adrift on a sea of feelings – anger, shame, grief, despair.  And I don’t know how to deal with any of them.

Just when I was in danger of drowning, you threw me a lifeline.  As you always do.  Always, John.

A little while ago you told me to contact Irene Adler.  “Do something while there’s still a chance, because that chance doesn’t last for ever,” you said.  I didn’t do anything, because I didn’t have the courage.  I didn’t contact Irene Adler, because it wasn’t her I wanted.    It was you, John.  It’s always been you.  From the day you walked into that lab at Bart’s.  One look into your eyes and I was lost.  So I just built the barrier higher to protect myself, to keep myself distant.

I’ve been an idiot.  I am an idiot.  But,

I love you.

I don’t know what to do.

Write to me again, John.  Please.

Yours always,

Sherlock


	4. Chapter 4

Dear Sherlock,

I’m still in shock after your letter.  I’m thrilled and excited and terrified about what our future holds.  Even writing “our future” fills me with hope and fear in equal measure.

When I read it, it was all I could do not to run to Baker Street and take you in my arms, but I think it may be a bit soon for that.  And anyway, you asked me to write.

Ask me anything, Sherlock.  Ask me to do anything.  Don’t be afraid to ask.  If there’s something I’m not ready to tell you or to do, I’ll tell you.  After all the secrets and lies and damage, we need honesty above everything if we’re going to make a success of this. 

In my letter I wrote that there were things, plural, I had to tell you, but I really only told you one thing.  The most important.  I love you.  The next most important is that I’m sorry.  I didn’t want to put them in the same letter, because I didn’t want you to get the idea that I was sorry about loving you.  I’m not.  Not at all.  I am sorry I didn’t just say it out loud all those years ago, but that’s another story.

What I am sorry for, more sorry than I can ever express, is the way I treated you after Mary died.  I’m sorry that I made you feel responsible for her death and ashamed that I punished you for it, when the person I should have been punishing was myself.  You didn’t kill Mary, Sherlock.  It wasn’t your fault.  It was her choice, and if anyone is responsible for her making that choice, it’s me.

I loved Mary.  I did.  But not the way I love you.  She didn’t have the power to destroy me that you have.  I had the power to destroy her, but I didn’t know it.  Didn’t see it.

Mary was cleverer than you, for all your deductive powers.  She understood on a different level from you, because she allowed herself emotion.  No, she didn’t allow it, she threw herself into it, heart and soul.  On that awful day, when she said to me, “You were my whole world,” she meant it.  She loved me so much more than I loved her.  She knew that I loved you and knew what it would do to me to see you die.  She had seen it, had brought me back from the brink, but she knew me well enough to know that I wouldn’t survive that again.  She saved you to save me, Sherlock.

When she shot you in Magnussen’s office, it was to save me.  She was a trained assassin, and yet she didn’t kill you.  She saved me.  You took the bullet to save me.  Then you nearly killed yourself with drugs and almost let Culverton Smith murder you.  It was all to save me, and I’m so, so unworthy of that kind of sacrifice.  I’ve been seeing it as a burden, something to feel guilty about, but I can’t go on that way. 

Mary and you didn’t go through all that for me to give up.  I have to pick myself up, get on with my life, bring up our daughter, and try to find a way to fill her life with love.

Can you, will you help me do that, Sherlock?  It’s a lot to ask.  Maybe too much, but I have to ask.

Always yours,

John

**Author's Note:**

> There are some truly wonderful epistolary fics that have inspired me to try my hand (on a smaller scale). "The Pieces that Fall to Earth" by Itsallfine is the first one that springs to mind, because it has brought me such joy.


End file.
